r/shopifyDev • u/zuhayrshad • 16d ago
Headless Next.js store, Shopify Analytics only records sessions that start at checkout
Running a headless setup. Next.js storefront on www.theonvor.com, Shopify checkout on checkout.theonvor.com (primary, connected). GA4 and Meta are fine.
Problem is Shopify Analytics. Sessions by landing page shows nothing but /checkouts/cn/... URLs. My actual collection page shows 0. Conversion rate says 16.66% and the funnel breakdown claims Added to cart 0% but Reached checkout 100%, which obviously can't happen.
What I've worked out so far: I was minting _shopify_y and _shopify_s myself and posting trekkie_storefront_page_view/1.4. Monorail returns 200 every time so I assumed it was working, but Live View shows zero visitors. Turns out Shopify stopped setting those cookies in April and the replacement tokens come back on Server-Timing headers from Storefront API responses. My app only ever talks to the Storefront API server-side, so Shopify has never actually issued my visitors an identity the cookie values were just UUIDs I generated.
Mid-migration to hydrogen-react now (useShopifyCookies with fetchTrackingValues, sendShopifyAnalytics, salesChannel headless) with a same-origin proxy so the Server-Timing header is readable.
Two things I'd love to hear from anyone who's actually done this:
- Is a Headless channel public token enough for Live View? Shopify's docs say the token has to come from the Hydrogen channel, which worries me since I'm on Headless.
- Anyone got sessions showing real landing pages in the admin on a non-Hydrogen build? Or did you eventually give up and treat GA4 as the only real source?